Getting To Know A Father Who Always Knew Best

January 08, 1989|By Sophy Burnham. Reprinted with permission from New Woman magazine.

`I am struck by the resonance of the father-daughter relationship-and by the numbers of women searching for their fathers. Why not fathers for their daughters?`

My father died seven years ago. During the last eight years of his life, he had been incapacitated by a stroke. So, in a way, he has been dead to me for 15 years. I was a grown woman when he died, and I had believed I had fully mourned him.

Then, about a year ago, the ending of yet another unhappy love affair prompted me to think about my relationship with my father, the first man I had ever loved. Surprisingly, feelings of anger, loss and abandonment surged into my consciousness.

And, gradually, I became obsessed with the desire to understand a man I felt I had never really known. Who was my father? What did he think about? Did he ever have an affair? How did he handle disillusionment?

Fathers are so important to women. We live in a male world, and we need fathers as role models. It`s comforting to have a man of your own blood, who has gone there ahead of you, calling back his insights. But what am I to do, here in midlife, adrift without a father to lead the way?

In my teens, whenever I went on a date my father would stop me in the hall: ``Wait. Let me look at you.`` I would turn for his approval. ``You look lovely,`` he would say. ``Now remember, when you get to the dance, stop a moment at the doorway, lift your head, take a breath, and say to yourself, `I am the most beautiful woman here.` And only then go in.``

He knew about psyching yourself up.

I regret not knowing him better, not sharing our inner, emotional lives. I have even wondered, for the first time, whether he loved me-and, if so, how? How did it take expression? I miss him so much that I burst into tears at any display of a father`s caring for his daughter-and at the reverse, a daughter`s abandonment by her father.

I heard recently of a young Richmond, Va., girl who became a nun in a cloistered order in France so strict that, in addition to the requirements of prayer and silence, the nuns could not have news of their families, not even to hear if their parents or siblings died.

The father of this girl was so distraught that he flew to France to beg permission to see her. He was allowed to stand behind a grate to look longingly at his daughter who had fallen in love with God, this girl draped in heavy black. He could never again take her in his arms or smell her hair.

I can feel his sorrow as I imagine him there, unable to reach out to his daughter except with his eyes.

But more frequently it`s daughters` abandonment I hear about, and their stories, too, bring me to tears: Phyllis, whose father walked out when she was 4 and never once in 30 years tried to get in touch with her again; Beth, whose drunken father betrayed her with sexual advances (another form of abandonment); Jeanie, whose father died in a car accident when she was 15 and who, ever since, has been looking for him in every man she meets.

I am struck by the resonance of the father-daughter relationship-and by the numbers of women searching for their fathers. Why not fathers for their daughters?, I want to know.

My father taught me about boys: ``Give him a compliment. Even just to comment on his tie! You have no idea how scared boys are, how hard it is for them.``

He taught me confidence: ``You can`t afford to be shy. Remember that the other people at the party are more afraid than you are. It`s your

responsibility to put them at ease. Find something to say! There`s no excuse for being self-absorbed.``

My search for my father is like a mythic quest. I call into the void,

``Who were you?`` in order to answer the other question: Who am I? But is it really my own father I am looking for or is it a psychological father, an existential father, the father of my soul?

PAINFUL JOURNEY

This inner journery is painful, but I comfort myself with the belief that anything painful offers an opportunity for growth.

For years I wondered how people could imagine God as ``the Father,`` as all loving, all giving. My experience with fathers-my own, my friends`-

indicates that too many of them have either short attention spans where their daughters are concerned or have judgmental dispositions, more disciplinary than forgiving.

My father loved people. He loved a challenge. He loved to think, to argue a point (he was a trial lawyer), to perform before an audience-preferably the Supreme Court-but, in the absence of an adult judge, before his children.

The role my brother, my sister, and I played as children was one of holding up a mirror to our father, so that he could see himself reflected in the glass. But I wanted him to look at me! I struggled for his acknowledgment: ``If I write a book, will you pay attention to me instead of read? What if I get married, have a child, win a prize?``